So, according to a conversation I just had on the Discord, Form Changes for things like Shaymin and Giratina are permanent once they happen. I'm a bit sad about this, because I was only testing Giratina's form change to report for Valor Dex, and didn't expect the process to be irreversible (I greatly prefer the Origin Form over Altered). Would there be a way to make this process reversible/a way to work around it? At the moment, it appears there's two options: (According to Revan) Mess with the code so the value can be changed to go down a stage as well as up (Apparently can screw with the rest of the code, so bit wary about that) Maybe just add evolution stages for form changes every two levels or so? I know it'd probably be ugly to look at in the string, but it seems like the safer option. If neither of these things can work, could we at least add an additional warning text for Pokémon with Form Changes? This Giratina took a long time to hatch and I'd rather not go through the process of trying to get another one just for the other form, and I'm sure other people would like to be able to shift between forms as well.
Yeah, I don't think it's fair to have form changes be permanent. It really sucks what happened with your Giratina.
I have no idea how that could and if it could be coded, but... maybe if at a certain level, the Pokémon could "evolve" into its form, and then at the same level, the form can "evolve" back into its former form? idk if it’s understandable, but basically that means the green arrow never goes off and you can theoretically change forms endlessly.
Repeating what Ben has said regarding this on Discord: the way that Pokémon currently change forms is pretty much hard-coded and getting around that in any way whatsoever is going to be far easier said than done because that requires coding knowledge that we don't have at the moment. That said, don't interpret this to mean that we aren't looking into ways that this could be possible! Ben actually said this is something that's on the table for the future: Achromatic-Yesterday at 8:15 PM what we'll do in the future is have an option to change a Pokémon's form without evolving it But at the current moment, you'll just have to make do.
But couldn't sky be hardcoded to evolve at level 5 like normal Shaymin is creating an endless loop (What Gwoomy was saying pretty much)? The only problem I see with that in theory is if the system is build to determine a final stage and can't ascend past that